Books by Bruce Nelson

From the early time of slavery to today, the African American community has embraced the church as a symbol and site for inspiration, guidance and hope. The celebration of adorning oneself has deep roots dating back to the first African slaves in America.              Hallelujah Hats  is a celebration of the churches of Washington Park, the once thriving segregated African American community in Mesa, Arizona, through the jewelry, hats, and fashion worn by female churchgoers. The exhibition focuses around five churches: North Center Street Baptist, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal, Voice of Pentecost, Holy Temple Church of Christ, and Mt. Baptist Calvary Church.            The book includes photos of vintage hats, purses, gloves, costume jewelry  shoes , dresses, and fur-lined, collared wool coats typically worn by the church members. It also includes historic photographs of ceremonial baptisms in the local canal.

This is a book about Irish nationalism and how Irish nationalists developed their own conception of the Irish race. Bruce Nelson begins with an exploration of the discourse of race--from the nineteenth--century belief that "e;race is everything"e; to the more recent argument that there are no races. He focuses on how English observers constructed the "e;native"e; and Catholic Irish as uncivilized and savage, and on the racialization of the Irish in the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States, where Irish immigrants were often portrayed in terms that had been applied mainly to enslaved Africans and their descendants. Most of the book focuses on how the Irish created their own identity--in the context of slavery and abolition, empire, and revolution. Since the Irish were a dispersed people, this process unfolded not only in Ireland, but in the United States, Britain, Australia, South Africa, and other countries. Many nationalists were determined to repudiate anything that could interfere with the goal of building a united movement aimed at achieving full independence for Ireland. But others, including men and women who are at the heart of this study, believed that the Irish struggle must create a more inclusive sense of Irish nationhood and stand for freedom everywhere. Nelson pays close attention to this argument within Irish nationalism, and to the ways it resonated with nationalists worldwide, from India to the Caribbean.

A study of how class and race have intersected in American society - above all, in the 'making' and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book examines how European immigrants became American and 'white' in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighbourhood.